Ooh I worked on this project as an undergrad years ago as a research associate! Awesome to see it get more press! It blows my mind that more economists aren't l

Ooh I worked on this project as an undergrad years ago as a research associate! Awesome to see it get more press! It blows my mind that more economists aren't leveraging big data to address macroeconomic problems & models; the data is less actionable than microeconomic/game theory problems, sure, but the learnings can be more impactful to policy in the long run. When this project was started, we were only looking at three big markets: real estate, groceries, and general "home goods" (washer machines are an example.) Essentially, using the CPI for inspiration and neo-classical macroeconomics with the "household unit" as the center of importance, those 3 groups seemed ideal as an MVP for the project. What I worry about is how they're going to update the model and structure of the project to incorporate the intersection of globalized markets (going to the iPod example, what if some variability in price can be explained by price stickiness, or lack thereof, of labor prices in China? etc.) Nevertheless - I'm all for the hacking/big data community seeing more of what's going on in the macroeconomics world, as I think it's just ripe with opportunity.